


Midnights

by AuditoryCheesecake



Series: A Cheesecake's Tumblr Shorts [30]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, Mild Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-09
Updated: 2017-08-09
Packaged: 2018-12-12 04:21:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11729388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuditoryCheesecake/pseuds/AuditoryCheesecake
Summary: Qunari may not dream, but Dorian certainly does.





	Midnights

He dreams every night, walking the twisting roads of the Fade with demons following in his shadow. His coldest fears and deepest desires lay over him like a blanket whenever he closes his eyes, seeping into his soul until he can smell blood and taste wine when he wakes.

Sometimes, when the day has been long and tiring, when he wants nothing more than to fall into bed and sleep until the next Age rolls around, the last thing Dorian wants to do is dream.

When he lived in Tevinter, those were the nights he sought company more recklessly, more desperately. It was too easy to cross into the Fade without knowing while poring over a book in a dim, lonely library. He might blink and open his eyes into a dream. Other people kept sleep at bay more easily, and could be trusted (not far, but far enough) to be loud about his rudeness should he nod off.

Since coming South, things had been… easier, in that regard. Perhaps there were simply more people in his library. Perhaps it was the crows.

Lately, he finds he might retire to bed even on the nights when the Fade hangs heavy and beckoning–but not his own bed, and not to sleep. Instead, the Iron Bull will keep him company until even Qunari heads must rest.

Perhaps Dorian shouldn’t spend so many nights awake beside him, listening to him breathe, memorizing the slow, steady drum of his heartbeat. It often seems like an unbalanced intimacy, a trespassing, to know this side of the Bull that not even he truly knows.

When Dorian asks to stay the night, the Bull doesn’t prod– even though he must notice when Dorian says “stay here” rather than “sleep here,” even though he must know that Dorian stays wakeful long after he himself is asleep and before he wakes. It’s a kindness to them both, that he asks no questions with the answer “demons.”

Likewise, Dorian does not ask why the Bull maintains that Qunari do not dream. He watches the Bull toss and turn, listens to barely formed words muttered in a dozen languages, feels the quiver of a fear the Iron Bull never shows awake– and he feels the demons pressing close. Perhaps it’s better for him not to talk of it. Perhaps that distance and denial actually help.

He finds it easier to protect Bull than to take the same actions for himself. He begins to spend his sleepless nights weaving spells and laying wards. Slowly, over weeks, a barrier shakes into being, a sphere that ignores such minutiae as walls and gravity, invisible and soundless, and more than enough to deter the little demons that torment Bull. It encompasses Sera’s room, some beds in the infirmary, and a great deal of empty space outside the wall. Solas comments on it.

The spell has no name, and Dorian is disinclined to write it down, but he strengthens it and widens it on the nights he can’t bear to think of dreaming.

Those nights grow fewer, as the walls of his fortress thicken. Perhaps Bull knows, but he doesn’t ask. He just smiles, when Dorian wakes up to find Bull watching over him.


End file.
